Fast Women: The Legendary Ladies of Racing

Since autos ran on bicycle tires, women have been racing; McCarthy, chief film critic for Variety, covers the rich history of women's racing in a narrative running from the turn of the 20th century until just after 1958, when marketing and sponsorship concerns squeezed out the ladies. Although McCarthy attempts to ""strip away every shred of nostalgia"" in homage to his unsentimental subjects, he writes with clear, infectious admiration for these unique pioneers. Suzy Dietrich, for example, was an ""enormously cute"" librarian who broke record after record in her Porsche 550 Spyder. Denise McCluggage, ""a plainspoken Kansan,"" fell in love with an MG and sent regular dispatches from behind the wheel to the International Herald Tribune. Though the impetus for the sport (and the book) came from the wealthy, McCarthy builds his narrative around its only-in-America transformation from aristocratic hobby to populist pastime by way of ""an excitedly fluid meritocracy."" McCarthy claims early on that ""it was a single photograph that seduced me,"" of aristocrat speed demon Evelyn Mull, smartly arranged in an early sports car with white shirt cuffs, leather gloves and a neat bun; fortunately, 16 pages of such photos are included, making this well-researched text a comprehensive survey of auto racing's first females.